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InformationWeek: What You're Probably Overlooking About Open Source

When I hear people discussing open-source software, they almost
always focus on cost advantages. Sometimes they talk about the
quality of open source versus more commercial options. But even
this is too narrow a view of open source. Another important
advantage of the open-source model is the speed of the release
cycles, which may be even more important as the information
technology industry moves toward real-time business.

Most commercial software companies take years to release major
new versions and weeks or even months to release substantive
patches. For contrast, in Eric Raymond's classic 'The Cathedral and
The Bazaar,' he describes the Linux kernel being released 'more
than once a day' early in development. This was early in Linux's
evolution and many of these were simply small fixes and
modifications, but even as Linux has matured as an operating
system, it isn't unusual to see stable kernels (the even part of
the series--1.2.x, 2.0.x, 2.2.x, etc.) released at least every
month. To see a list of the recent Linux kernel releases, visit
www.kernel.org. In this respect, Linux is fairly representative of
most substantial open-source projects..."